Saturday, October 17, 2015

As if they were trash

It is no longer man who commands, but money, money, cash commands. And
God our Father gave us the task of protecting the earth — not for money,
but for ourselves: for men and women. We have this task! Nevertheless
men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption: it
is the “culture of waste”. If a computer breaks it is a tragedy, but
poverty, the needs and dramas of so many people end up being considered
normal. If on a winter's night, here on the Via Ottaviano — for example —
someone dies, that is not news. If there are children in so many parts
of the world who have nothing to eat, that is not news, it seems normal.
It cannot be so! And yet these things enter into normality: that some
homeless people should freeze to death on the street — this doesn’t make
news. On the contrary, when the stock market drops 10 points in some
cities, it constitutes a tragedy. Someone who dies is not news, but
lowering income by 10 points is a tragedy! In this way people are thrown
aside as if they were trash. --Pope Francis, General Audience, St. Peter's Square, Wednesday, 5 June 2013

The high priests of capitalism have made of the economy a god - an idol. They have their sacred gibberish and trickle-down dogmas. Only they have knowledge of the inner sanctum. Of course, the reality is that trickle-down economics does not trickle anything down without it being remotely connected to the expansion of a pyramid scheme. Everything later trickles up. And our governments sign the promissory note for that future trickling up by "borrowing" the bulk of its country's money into existence as interest-bearing debt (the money doesn't exist before it is "borrowed"). Thus the high priests of the trickle-down inner sanctum have the governments as their sycophant lackeys. The politicians won't do anything contrary to the will of their money-lenders (who don't actually have money to lend). Borrower is servant to the lender. Goodbye sovereignty. What trickles down in reality are chains - gradual chains, trickled chains.

And there's no law even to insure gleaning of the fields. That's communism you see. And the reality is that there is no inner sanctum, really. They would have us believe it is this entirely disconnected thing, apart from us - a god - that demands all sorts of back-breaking burdens and loud lamentations and austerity. The truth is that the solution to the economic problems is not convoluted but simple, precisely because the problem is connected to a human problem. Money is made to serve man, not man to serve money.

O Mary conceived without sin,

Saint Charbel

Saint Therese of Lisieux

Saint Mutien-Marie Wiaux

Pope Saint John Paul the Great

Saint Josemaria Escriva

Blessed Oscar Romero

Max Beckmann

Beckmann's Self-Portrait with Horn

Andrei Tarkovsky

Stalker

And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him Who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?

Stalker

While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. And He said to them, "What is this conversation which you are holding with each other as you walk?"

About Me

"Now that everyone who yearned to wear long pants/
has essentially achieved them,/
long pants, which have themselves been underwear/
repeatedly, and underground more than once,/
it is time perhaps to cherish the culture of shorts,/
to moderate grim vigour/
with the knobble of bare knees,/
to cool bareknuckle feet in inland water,/
slapping flies with a book on solar wind/
or a patient bare hand, beneath the cadjiput trees,/
to be walking meditatively/
among green timber, through the grassy forest/
towards a calm sea/
and looking across to more of that great island/
and the further tropics."
--From "The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever", by Les Murray